Moon Phases Night Lamp

I had this moon phases lamp in my mind for a while, now that I'm getting into design for additive manufacturing I made the first try at it. I should improve it, but it is printable and working at this stage.

Improved:

V2 added, central column is now thicker and wider, so the new version is both stronger and have little more space for wires and resistances.

The moon landscape is printed on the internal side, so during the day, it looks like just a simple sphere. Inside the sphere, there is a shadow-casting hemisphere geared to the bottom wheel. I think the assembly is pretty obvious, let me know if you need help.

As light source, I used an old 5v phone charger to power 3 yellow 3mm LEDs in parallel with a 50ohm resistance, you can use a single 5mm bright one and any cheap USB charger (size the resistance accordingly).

I printed everything at 0.16mm resolution, of course, lower is better, especially for moon-top but expect a 24h+ print time.

You can print moon-base.stl without supports, moon-wheel needs a little support under the gearing, moon-top needs support ONLY in the bottom part.This is important, avoid supports inside the moon sphere as you will have no way to take them out! I have excluded the sphere from supports in Cura, check pictures. You will also need to be sure that the external sphere walls are solid, check that your slicer put no infills there. To obtain this, I set the wall thickness to 2.4 and top/bottom thickness to 1.8.

Clean moon-wheel and moon-top support out with care before assembly, there is some tolerance but not much. I found a knife to be enough, but you can use some sandpaper or a rotary tool, but avoid having dust or specks fall inside the sphere.

Close everything with two 2mm screws, I love to use thread forming M2 but you can use self-tapping or any loose screw you have around that fit there.

Please post your makes and give me some feedback if you make one!

Category: Interactive Art